one top especially for you

When I was in Istanbul, I saw these little boys and older men selling the most beautiful tops in different colors and sometimes designs. One day as I alighted from the boat, one of these boys approached me at the dock. I looked into the boy's dark eyes and then stole a view of the Bosphorous behind him, as the yellow of the sun danced on its undulating surface.

There was something romantic about the whole setting. He started to show me how I could twist and spin the top. These tops were everywhere in Istanbul, boys and men selling them in every street, piled up in cartons at bazaars, and even sold at slightly higher prices at little souvenir shops in the modern parts of the city. This was Istanbul, in its tops, and I had to take back home with me a bit of Istanbul. I went back to my hotel room and I carefully hid them in the drawer.

And in that drawer, there was one top especially for you... I wanted you to have something from me, but more than that, something that carried all my little memories of when I was in that city. And that you were there with me. If only for a very few moments.

This is what my cheap one pound top means. That when I walked in Taksim, that when I traveled on the Bosphorus, that when I was at the top of Camlica Hill, that when I marveled at the magnificence of the Dolmabahce, that when I sat in the front garden at Beylerbeyi Palace, that when I watched the city beneath from the balcony of my hotel room, that when I saw mother of pearl inlays in furniture, that when I sat on the carpeted floor and tried to pray (only tried) at Fatih Camii, I thought of you. And I even wondered what you would have thought of such beauty.